Author Archives: Geoff Gilbert

In my first post, I introduced the framework for solidarity economy political economy power that grassroots social justice movements are building around the world and in the US. This post will elaborate how solidarity economies actually work.

Democratic Land

Community land trusts (CLTs) facilitate community ownership and control of land, and land banks allow communities to democratically redistribute land. Movement groups are hard at work building CLTs and land banks, which, when combined with broader changes to property rights associated with land, like the creation of a land value sales tax, help us imagine the beginnings of a land system designed for human use, as opposed to the status quo design for financial profit.

Community land trusts are nonprofit corporations that: 1) enter into covenants to not sell land for a specified period of time, typically up to 99 years; and 2) are controlled by boards comprised of members who use or live near land. By covenanting to not sell the land for a long period of time, CLTs tie the cost of using the land to the cost of purchasing and maintaining the land and the structures it contains, and thereby divorce the cost of using the land from the ever-increasing market price of the land. Detaching the land from its market price can insulate land from the gentrifying forces – such as rising rents, rising property taxes and irresistible offers to individuals to sell land to the highest bidder – that are displacing working class people, and disproportionately people of color, in cities throughout the world. Democratic governance of the CLT by members who live on, use, and/ or live near the land facilitates democratic land use decision-making.

Even though humanity possesses the wealth necessary for every person to have everything they require in order to live with material freedom and dignity, current property regimes allow for 26 billionaires to own as much wealth as 3.8 billion people around the world while billions of people around the world, including in the US, live without access to food, water, adequate shelter and clothing, health care, education, transportation, the information and communication capacities made possible by digital technology, leisure time, and other aspects of material freedom and dignity. Many grassroots movements are trying to change this by imagining and building democratic political economy planning capacity through “solidarity economy institutions” premised on transforming the legal and institutional forms through which humans can coordinate to produce, exchange, and distribute, everything that we need in order to live.

Solidarity economies are rooted in direct democracy, community power, and local control of economic institutions. They include and build upon many of the ideas in the Movement for Black Lives’‘A Vision for Black Lives’ and the Black Youth project 100’s‘Agenda to Build Black Futures.’ More specifically, solidarity economies are built around local and democratically controlled institutions that own and control land, labor, and money. Land banks allow communities to democratically (re)distribute land, and community land trusts facilitate community ownership and control of land. Cooperatives create democratic ownership and control of productive capital and workspaces. And public, city-owned banks can coordinate with one another to produce the money needed to finance production for human need. Movements around the world – theZapatistas in Mexico; the municipalists in cities likeBarcelona andJackson, Mississippi; and the democratic confederalists ofRojava– are leading the way on building local solidarity economies that prioritize production for human need over profit.